1/12/2017: Olaf and the Camo Projects

Today’s post is a review of a couple of crochet gifts I made and gave over the past year.

The first is Olaf. If you live anywhere in or near a first world country, you’ve probably heard of this guy…

If you’ve been living in a cave or under a rock for the past five years, first off good for you, and secondly, Olaf is an animated enchanted snowman with suicidal tendencies (he likes warm hugs and the summer). He literally craves the embrace of the very thing that would kill him. Oh, and he can behead himself at opportune moments. He’s like a comically gifted emo kid.

Anyway, my bestie C., who you already know if very girly and LOVES snowmen, is totally gaga over Olaf. She stuck an antenna up Olaf’s butt in order to drive around with him on her car. The girl has some strange ideas about what’s cute sometimes.

The pattern is relatively straightforward – I crocheted this guy on a car trip and the only difficulty I had at the time was keeping straight which step I was on, since the pattern was on my phone that kept going to sleep.

That’s one weird looking Olaf.

I think he’s one of the more strange and demented looking creatures I’ve ever made. It’s very tough to make a crochet creature that already exists and is supposed to look like something specific. It’s like trying to paint a portrait of a real person instead of one out of your head. I think everything from the neck down on this guy actually looks pretty good. The face just doesn’t do it for me. Something about the shape…or the eyes…I don’t know. This is not to say that the pattern isn’t great; it is. More likely it’s my well-known deficiencies in being able to put facial features on correctly. I can never quite do it so that the toys don’t come out looking half-cocked. I’m usually ok when someone else is there to help me place them, but I’m terrible on my own. Another problem is that I decided to make the eyes from crochet rather than the recommended felt pieces. I didn’t have felt or a hot glue gun in the car with me at the time.

The other gifts were made for C’s daughter, also a good friend of mine. J is currently 17, headed into the National Guard once she graduates high school, and is obsessed with all things camo-colored. Since messy bun hats are all the rage in the crochet world nowadays, and J has a great head of hair, I hopped over to the nearest Evil Empire and snagged the Red Heart yarn I needed.

I roughly followed this Easy Peasy Messy Bun Hat Pattern, though I used a hair elastic for the opening hole of the hat and worked my crochet stitches around that. It was indeed both easy and peasy to do. The camo colors come through much better in person, and I like that the brim of the hat is a different pattern than the rest of it.

Since I was forced to buy a jumbo sized skein of camo yarn, I also ended up making J a matching Crochet Teddy Bear.

J’s crochet teddy bear. I love this kid.

This pattern was also quick and easy to work up. However I do think this teddy bear looks like he is one chromosome short of a full pot. And this time it really isn’t my doing…the camo teddy bear at the bottom of the pattern page looks nearly the same. Although again, I substituted crocheted eyes for stick-on plastic ones.

Despite my own negative critiques of the final state of these gifts, both J and C love them. I’m so glad they do.